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The history of “startling” or controversial choices for
Vice-Presidential running mates often means the Presidential
candidate is in deep trouble. The safe and most electorally
advantaged selection for Romney would have been Ohio Senator Rob
Portman who was presumed to be the leading candidate. Portman has
the resume one wants in a Vice-President and much of the same
knowledge of the budget as Paul Ryan, though having been the OMB head
during the big deficit years of George W. Bush would have been
fodder for Democrats, it is nothing in comparison to the fodder
they will make of the Paul Ryan budget plan and its plan to
eliminate Medicare (at least plan 1). Portman’s tenure as Bush’s
OMB director has not stopped him from getting Tea Party support
and the deficits could be explained away by needing to fund wars
in response to 9-11 and popular new programs like the Medicare
drug benefit. Ohio is a swing state and a state that is the
single biggest bellwether on who wins the Presidential election
as its residents have voted for the winner in every Presidential
election since 1964. In 2004, Ohio essentially decided the
election when Bush won by a mere 2.1% and Ohio’s 20 electoral
votes would have swung the Electoral College to John Kerry.

Rarely do Vice Presidential candidates even tip their own states.
Al Gore even lost his own state when he
ran for President on his own. Clinton in fact chose Gore
because he was worried despite being a Southerner himself, being
swept away in the South which has become solidly Republican. They
did win Tennessee in the 1992 election, but how much Gore should
be credited is questionable as he could not carry the state when
he ran for President. However, Lyndon Johnson clearly tipped the
balance for Kennedy in Texas where they won by only 50,000 votes.
Muskie carried Maine for Hubert Humphrey in what was otherwise a
rout. Paul Ryan could tip the balance in Wisconsin – he did
win a Congressional district that voted for Obama barely and Ryan
won with almost 64% of the vote. But that might be a testament to
good constituent service and the value of being an incumbent –
probably running against someone who didn’t believe they would
even win. That is a far cry from carrying a state.

Why is Ryan a risky choice? Because Ryan to his credit has had
the rare and unique courage to come out with a specific plan to
deal with our unsustainable Medicare and Medicaid entitlements. I
don’t agree with his solution, but I commend him for having
the coverage to take on politically sacred cows. Unfortunately,
his plan is not saleable – and resulted in the Republicans losing
a special election to fill a House vacancy in upstate New York
last year for a seat the Republicans had held for 40 years. Here
is a commercial that ran then and why it is amazing that Romney
took this risk particularly as seniors were a demographic Romney
was winning in polls:

Romney’s polling success with seniors was in part due because
Obamacare includes $700 billion in Medicare cuts mostly from
cutting payments to providers. This is the same $700 billion Ryan
wants to cut from Medicare, but Ryan makes the cut by directly
cutting coverage or changing how people are covered. In other
words, Ryan’s $700 billion cut looks more threatening to seniors
and prospective seniors in particular than Obama’s, though an
argument can be made that provider cuts would lead to less
service and providers dropping out as many do for Medicaid which
has lower reimbursements than Medicare, optically Ryan’s idea
looks more ominous and politically will be portrayed as such. In
picking Ryan, Romney took a weapon against Obama and made it a
weapon against himself.

Most of the time Presidential candidates make safe picks, so the
record on surprise choices is limited, but two of them in recent
memory are Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin. In both cases it was hoped
that trailing campaigns could be saved by making an historic pick
of a female candidate. In both cases, it was hoped the choices
would “energize” the base of the respective parties. While
nobody questioned Mondale’s liberal credentials he was seen as
boring and bland and was running against a popular charismatic
incumbent President (Reagan). McCain was viewed with more
suspicion by the right wing of the Republican Party because he
was not in lock step view with particularly on immigration to
which he had to change his view to get through the Republican
primary much the same way Romney has had to move away from his
positions that don’t dovetail with the far right. By
picking Palin he got someone solidly conservative and youthful
versus his old age and that would inject excitement into a
faltering campaign.

It bears mentioning that Ferraro was also a sitting House member
one of the few ever nominated for Vice President. Ferraro though
had less stature in Congress and less legislative accomplishment
than Paul Ryan who not only chaired an important committee was
given almost carte blanche by his colleagues to make a federal
budget, unprecedented in the history of Congress. But both
Ferraro and Ryan not because they are House members per se, but
based on their work in House did not spend in on foreign affairs
or military matters and did and will get questions about their
lack of experience here. That was also an issue with Sarah Palin
and her response about Alaska being close to Russia only made it
worse. When most people think of readiness to take the Presidency
on a moment’s notice they are really talking about foreign policy
readiness and the ability to be commander in chief. It was why
Barack Obama picked Joe Biden who chaired the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate
Judiciary Committee and had been in the Senate for 30 years.
Biden was the fourth most senior member of the Senate when chosen
as Vice-President and the 15th longest serving Senator
in history – nobody was going to question his fitness for the
office. Likewise, George W. Bush as a Governor of Texas
with no foreign policy chose Dick Cheney who served as Secretary
of Defense including winning the first Gulf War and when he was
in the House rose to the number two position on the Republican
side there, so it gave Bush someone with extensive federal
government experience.

The Republican ticket is the first one I can think of it my
lifetime that has had so little foreign policy experience. The
Republican spin on this is that Ronald Reagan had no foreign
policy experience and he brought down Communist Russia and ended
the Cold War. In hindsight, that looks great but let’s remember
candidate Reagan. Candidate Reagan was running against an
incumbent President (Carter) who was also a former Governor with
no foreign policy experience before entering office that had
Americans being held hostage in Iran for a year, our embassy
there over run and had a failed rescue mission when American
aircraft crashed into each other. Reagan also has George H.W.
Bush as his running mate who had run the CIA and was US
Ambassador to China, so with George Bush as his running mate and
against the backdrop of Carter’s ineptitude – Reagan’s lack of
foreign policy skills hardly mattered.

Except in times of war, Presidential elections will be decided on
domestic issues. More so than most elections with the nation not
in a “hot” war, with our troops withdrawn from Iraq and leaving
Afghanistan and with unemployment still high – foreign policy has
gotten not attention in this election so far. That will change
with the debates and there is no way for a Romney-Ryan ticket to
look good in foreign policy. Obama is an incumbent Commander in
Chief who won a Nobel Peace prize, killed Bin Laden, extracted
our troops from the Middle East and has largely followed the
national security measures of George W. Bush including keeping
Guantanamo open much to chagrin of his liberal supporters and at
odds with his own 2008 campaign. So there is not much for Romney
to attack on Obama on except his failure to slow Iran down from
getting a nuclear weapon and Romney cannot say too much on that
because people are going to ask what would you do differently and
Romney is adept at not taking firm stances unless pressured by
the far right on Obamacare, abortion etc. So Ryan here adds no
value and if anything is a net negative because of his lack of
foreign policy experience.

Beyond Geraldine Ferraro we don’t have a lot of example of
sitting House members as Vice Presidential nominees. Barry
Goldwater’s 1964 was an obscure House member from upstate New
York mostly likely chosen to given the ticket an East –West
balance as Republicans in the Northeast still mattered back then
(the Rockefeller wing of the party). Goldwater lost in a
landslide but his VP nominee was not the reason. There has some
mention of John Nance Garner who FDR’s Vice President in his
first two terms as being the last sitting member of the House
elected Vice-President. It needs to be kept in mind Garner was
the Speaker of the House and that puts him in a different
category than other House members and he also challenged FDR for
President for the Democratic nomination. FDR’s choice of Garner
here was much the same as Kennedy picking Lyndon Johnson. Both
Garner and Johnson were from Texas and both FDR and Kennedy from
the Northeast. Garner was Speaker of House and Johnson was the
Senate Majority Leader – something many have forgotten and
Johnson had also run against Kennedy for the nomination. Both
were examples of geographical ticket balancing and creating party
unity. A sitting House member other than one has been
Speaker has last been elected Vice-President in 1908 when James
Sherman was Howard Taft’s Vice-President. Sherman notably is the
last Vice President to die in office. At the time there was no
constitutional mechanism to fill the vacancy and the office
remained vacant until the next election. Gerald Ford was actually the last House member to make
it to Vice President but he was appointed to fill the vacancy
caused by Agnew’s resignation and he was the House Minority
Leader at the time (meaning if the Republicans had controlled the
House he would have been the Speaker).

Ryan’s nomination has much in common with Ferraro’s and Palin’s
although many people will not initially see the commonality other
than Ferraro being a House member. They were all risky picks in
attempt to save a campaign that the Presidential candidate had
concluded he was way behind in. The last two didn’t work and I
don’t think this one will either.